Moscow has taken great pride in the fact that the number of Russians incarcerated in its penal system has fallen in recent years, but it has not stressed two current shortcomings of the system: the number of prisoners per 100,000 (434) remains vastly higher than most countries and the number of recidivists has doubled over the last decade.

Nor have regime media outlets pointed out that current proposals for reform instead of making things better will lead to a situation in which Russia’s prisons “will very much resemble a renewed variant of the GULAG,” according to Aleksey Kozlov and Olga Romanova of Novaya gazeta.

They offer that conclusion at the end of a long article today which begins by quoting Aleksandr Auzan, the dean of the economics faculty at Moscow State University who says that present-day Russian society “educates the individual in three institutions: the school, the army and the jail.”

The first two are important, but the third is far more significant than many think.

If one counts not only the number of Russians who have passed through the prison system but also their families, friends, police, court officials and jailers, “almost half of the population of Russia is one way or another connected to prison,” Kozlov and Romanova say.

“And what is the prison teaching them at present? It is teaching them to lie and to conform. To give bribes to get out early … to avoid contradicting the authorities and to avoid showing any initiative and to be a cog in the system.” And it is also teaching those who go through it to have contempt for the rules and the rulers.

“More than that,” they continue, “besides faith in the state and in other people, prison also takes away from the individual his future, that which he could have after being freed.” And it does nothing to help him in that direction while incarcerated, having failed to provide prisoners with any useful training or habits for life outside the walls.

Prison officials say that what they do in the camps is because there is no other way to establish order. “But this isn’t the case,” the journalists say. What is needed for order is a complex system of infrastructure and rules that promote different outcomes than the ones being promoted at present.

Most of the prisons and colonies in Russia are antiquated: according to the penal system itself, 80 percent of them need “immediate reconstruction.” Fifty-two of them don’t have plumbing, most are horrifically overcrowded, and few correspond even to Russian let alone European standards of hygiene.’

Those who work are paid so little that they have to turn to criminal authorities within the jails for the most basic needs. But that pattern means that they are quickly recruited into the ranks of those who commit more serious and violent crimes. There was some progress against this practice in 2011 when first timers and recidivists were separated. But little else.

A great deal of additional money is needed to address all these problems, but more important, the two journalists say, but more important are fundamental structural reforms. Those are not being proposed by the penal administration. Instead, all of its proposals suggest that they will end by creating “a renewed version of [Stalin’s] GULAG.”

Under the proposed changes, prisoners will lose control over where they are sent – often distant from their families – what they are employed to work on and how much they will receive. Moreover, the already inadequate medical care the prisoners now receive will become even worse.

And such an arrangement just as it did earlier will cast a dark shadow on Russia’s future, quite possibly making it impossible for Russia to reform and at the very least placing burdens on it that will add to the difficulties its citizens now must bear.

Related

This article has one bizarre fault. It may allude to but does not mention the status of political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. In that regard, it should also be stated that while Muscovy’s courts and penal administrations have never admitted to the detention and incarceration of such individuals, the authorities of the Russian GULAG Archipelago have always kept a special watchful eye on such individuals and in many cases have invoked severe and inhumane treatment against those same people who were deliberately and wrongfully accused. Why? Because the Kremlin has always considered their political prisoners as a threat or potential threat to their very existence. However, jailing these individuals has never resolved anything. All that Moscow accomplished was moving the “problem” elsewhere and the creation of martyrs. Besides, there will always be more around the corner.

Dagwood Bumstead

It should be pointed out that many of those sent to the Gulag as “politicals” were just arrested at random and accused of political crimes under one of Article 58’s subsections. In reality most were apolitical, and totally innocent of whatever they had been accused of.

Ihor Dawydiak

Which in turn could beg the question as to why would anyone want to have a problem where no problem existed in the first place. Hence, to understand this twisted logic, all that is required is to decipher Putin’s objectives and his unreserved willingness to achieve his ends using any means available in the same or similar manner as is his heroes Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. As for his means or modus operandi, Vovochka has been trying to create instability among others with the purpose of attempting to divide and rule. In addition, he has been threatening, incarcerating and murdering innocents which in itself boils down to nothing less than terrorism. So what is his objective? During the Soviet era the former US President Ronald Reagan coined the term “Evil Empire” to describe Muscovy, its leadership and its desire for raw power and world domination. In the current context, the actors (personnel) have changed but the objective has remained the same. However, Putin the Pederast has not learned from history. Every Empire that has risen has also fallen or disintegrated and trying to recreate another totalitarian entity will end up with the same result with Putin Et al. joining the trash heap of history.

zorbatheturk

A RuSzsian will always build a gulag.

About the Source

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. He has served as director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn, and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Earlier he has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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